ICT news

• Bret Taylor Steps Down As Co-Chair and CEO of Salesforce

  05-12-2022 23:40 via slashdot.org
  Ron Miller reports via TechCrunch: It's been quite a roller coaster ride for Bret Taylor over the last year. In one week last December, he was named board chair at Twitter and co-CEO at Salesforce. One year later, he doesn't have either job. Taylor lost the job as Twitter board chair when Elon Musk took over last month and dissolved the Twitter board immediately. Today, he stepped down as co-CEO at Salesforce in a stunning announcement that appeared to come out of the blue. "After a lot of refle
  
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• Judge Orders US Lawyer In Russian Botnet Case To Pay Google

  05-12-2022 23:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: In December 2021, Google filed a civil lawsuit against two Russian men thought to be responsible for operating Glupteba, one of the Internet's largest and oldest botnets. The defendants, who initially pursued a strategy of counter suing Google for tortious interference in their sprawling cybercrime business, later brazenly offered to dismantle the botnet in exchange for payment from Google. The judge in the case was not amused, found for
  
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• Risky Online Behaviour Such as Piracy 'Almost Normalized' Among Young People, Says Study

  05-12-2022 22:21 via yro.slashdot.org
  Risky and criminal online behaviour is in danger of becoming normalized among a generation of young people across Europe, according to EU-funded research that found one in four 16- to 19-year-olds have trolled someone online and one in three have engaged in digital piracy. From a report: An EU-funded study found evidence of widespread criminal, risky and delinquent behaviour among the 16-19 age group in nine European countries including the UK. A survey of 8,000 young people found that one in fo
  
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• Chinese Hackers Stole Millions Worth of US COVID Relief Money, Secret Service Says

  05-12-2022 21:41 via yro.slashdot.org
  New submitter CrankyOldGuy writes: Chinese hackers have stolen tens of millions of dollars worth of U.S. COVID relief benefits since 2020, the Secret Service said on Monday. The Secret Service declined to provide any additional details but confirmed a report by NBC News that said the Chinese hacking team that is reportedly responsible is known within the security research community as APT41 or Winnti. APT41 is a prolific cybercriminal group that had conducted a mix of government-backed cyber int
  
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• FBI Joins Investigation Into North Carolina Power Outage Caused By 'Intentional' Attacks on Substations

  05-12-2022 21:01 via news.slashdot.org
  Joe_Dragon writes: With no suspects or motive announced, the FBI is joining the investigation into power outages in a North Carolina county believed to have been caused by "intentional" and "targeted" attacks on substations that left around 40,000 customers in the dark Saturday night, prompting a curfew and emergency declaration. The mass outage in Moore County turned into a criminal investigation when responding utility crews found signs of potential vandalism of equipment at different sites --
  
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• Work Begins in Western Australia on World's Most Powerful Radio Telescopes

  05-12-2022 20:24 via science.slashdot.org
  Construction of the world's largest radio astronomy observatory, the Square Kilometre Array, has officially begun in Australia after three decades in development. From a report: A huge intergovernmental effort, the SKA has been hailed as one of the biggest scientific projects of this century. It will enable scientists to look back to early in the history of the universe when the first stars and galaxies were formed. It will also be used to investigate dark energy and why the universe is expandin
  
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• Windows 11 Still Not Winning the OS Popularity Contest

  05-12-2022 19:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  Microsoft has released an out-of-band update to nudge laggards toward Windows 11 amid a migration pace that company executives would undoubtedly prefer is rather faster. From a report: The software giant is offering an option of upgrading to Windows 11 as an out of box experience to its Windows 10 22H2 installed base, the main aim being to smooth their path forward to the latest operating system. "On November 30, 2022, an out-of-band update was released to improve the Windows 10, version 2004, 2
  
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• DeepMind AI Topples Experts at Complex Game Stratego

  05-12-2022 19:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  Game-playing AIs that interact with humans are laying important groundwork for real-world applications. From a report: Another game long considered extremely difficult for artificial intelligence (AI) to master has fallen to machines. An AI called DeepNash, made by London-based company DeepMind, has matched expert humans at Stratego, a board game that requires long-term strategic thinking in the face of imperfect information. The achievement, described in Science on 1 December, comes hot on the
  
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• AMD Says Transistor Tech Will Keep Moore's Law Alive For 6 To 8 Years

  05-12-2022 18:21 via tech.slashdot.org
  Chipmaker AMD has hinted that new transistor technology will keep Moore's Law alive for the next six to eight years, but as one might guess, it will cost more. From a report: Meanwhile, the company still plans to market new chips based on its Zen 4 architecture next year, including Bergamo, which is intended to compete against Arm-based chips for cloud-native computing. In an interview with Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers at the financial outfit's TMT Summit, AMD CTO Mark Papermaster talked abo
  
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• Business-Software Companies Say Customers Are Pulling Back Amid Economic Concerns

  05-12-2022 17:42 via tech.slashdot.org
  Business-software companies say customers are being more cautious with their spending in response to a challenging economy, adding to the tech industry's list of concerns. From a report: Customers for companies such as Salesforce, Okta and CrowdStrike are taking longer to sign deals, and in some cases slowing their hiring plans as they try to protect their bottom lines, the software providers reported this past week. That trend has created a cloudy outlook for many in the once-booming business-s
  
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• EU Hosted 24-Hour Party In Its $400,000 Metaverse. Very Few People Turned Up.

  05-12-2022 17:05 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The European Union hosted a 24-hour party in its $407,000 metaverse, but only a handful of people turned up, according to journalist Vince Chadwick, one of the attendees. Last week's event was billed as a "beach party" offering "music and fun" to launch the EU's "Global Gateway" strategy. When the costly virtual-reality world was first shown in October, EU staff were already raising concerns, per Devex.
  "Depressing and embarrasing" and "digital garbage" were
  
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• Adobe Will Sell AI-made Stock Images

  05-12-2022 16:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  Adobe is opening its stock images service to creations made with the help of generative AI programs like Dall-E and Stable Diffusion, the company said. From the report: While some see the emerging AI creation tools as a threat to jobs or a legal minefield (or both), Adobe is embracing them. At its Max conference in October, Adobe outlined a broad role it sees generative AI playing in the future of content generation, saying it sees AI as a complement to, not a replacement for, human artists. Ado
  
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• AI-Generated Answers Temporarily Banned on Coding Site Stack Overflow

  05-12-2022 15:41 via tech.slashdot.org
  Stack Overflow, the go-to question-and-answer site for programmers, has temporarily banned users from sharing responses generated by AI chatbot ChatGPT. From a report: The site's mods said that the ban was temporary and that a final ruling would be made some time in the future after consultation with its community. But, as the mods explained, ChatGPT simply makes it too easy for users to generate responses and flood the site with answers that seem correct at first glance but are often wrong on c
  
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• As the Arctic Warms, Beavers Are Moving In

  05-12-2022 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  It began decades ago, with a few hardy pioneers slogging north across the tundra. It's said that one individual walked so far to get there that he rubbed the skin off the underside of his long, flat tail. Today, his kind have homes and colonies scattered throughout the tundra in Alaska and Canada -- and their numbers are increasing. Beavers have found their way to the far north. From a report: It's not yet clear what these new residents mean for the Arctic ecosystem, but concerns are growing, an
  
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• 2022's Geeky 'Advent Calendars' Tempt Programmers with Coding Challenges and Tips

  05-12-2022 13:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  "The Perl Advent Calendar has come a long way since it's first year in 2000," says an announcement on Reddit. But in fact the online world now has many daily advent calendars aimed at programmers — offering tips about their favorite language or coding challenges. The HTMHell site — which bills itself as "a collection of bad practices in HTML, copied from real websites" — decided to try publishing 24 original articles for their 2022 HTMHell Advent Calendar. Elsewhere on the way
  
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• Meet DTV's Successor: NextGen TV

  05-12-2022 09:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Around 2009 Slashdot was abuzz about how over-the-air broadcasting in North America was switching to a new standard called DTV. (Fun fact: North America and South America have two entirely different broadcast TV standards — both of which are different from the DVB-T standard used in Europe/Africa/Australia.) But 2022 ends with us already talking about DTV's successor in North America: the new broadcast standard NextGen TV.
  This time the new standard isn't mandatory for TV stations, CNET po
  
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• Amazon Builds a New Drone - But Is It Falling Behind Other Drone Delivery Services?

  05-12-2022 06:04 via tech.slashdot.org
  Axios reports:
  As Amazon prepares to debut its long-delayed Prime Air drone delivery service, it's also showing off a smaller, quieter drone that will be ready in 2024 and could be making regular deliveries in major cities by the end of the decade.
  The 80-pound hexagon-shaped aircraft, about 5 and a half feet in diameter, is nimble enough to make deliveries in highly populated areas such as Boston, Atlanta and Seattle. It'll be more capable and less intrusive than the model Amazon is using in it
  
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• Over 50 Programmers Generate 50,000-Word Novels For 9th Annual 'Nanogenmo' Event

  05-12-2022 03:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Since 1999 fiction writers have tried starting and finishing the composition of 50,000-word novels in November for "National Novel Writing Month". But for the last nine years, programmers have instead tried generating 50,000 word novels — and this year's edition received more than 50 entries.
  "The only rule is that you share at least one novel and also your source code at the end," explains the event's official page on GitHub.From the repositor
  
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• Senator Urges Automakers to Keep Making Cars with AM Radio

  05-12-2022 02:03 via tech.slashdot.org
  The Boston Globe reports that U.S. Senator Ed. Markey just sent a letter to more than 20 car manufacturers asking them to continue including AM radios in future car models — including electric vehicles:
  Some EV manufacturers have raised concerns even as far back as 2016 about how the battery power of an EV can interfere with AM radio signals. However, Markey addressed these concerns saying, "car manufacturers appear to have developed innovative solutions to this problem."
  "The last time I
  
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• Writers of 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story' Had Imagined an Even Darker Sequel

  05-12-2022 01:01 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  The writers of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story "had an idea for a sequel that would have been even darker and more morally ambiguous," writes Screen Rant:Rogue One told the story of how the Rebel Alliance gained access to the Death Star plans, and further explored the sacrifices that needed to be made to defeat the Empire. Famously, the movie led straight into the events of Star Wars: A New Hope, and most of its main characters died, so there was never any true hope for a direct Rogue One sequel. H
  
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